Suzanne Broughton: Gracious! How charm school lessons linger

I attended charm school at the vanguard of all things classy and charming in the ’70s: Montgomery Ward’s. When I was 10 years old, I went every Wednesday night to the Wendy Ward Charm School classes in a tiny, windowless room you accessed by walking through the girls dressing room on the lower floor of the Montgomery Ward in Huntington Center.

It wasn’t that I was interested in being charming (that luckily came naturally to me. It can’t really be taught. You know, it’s a gift really) and all the perks that come with being incredibly charming. I clearly remember my motivation: I wanted to be a model and at the end of the Montgomery Ward Charm School, if I passed and had the charm of Dinah Shore, I took part in a runway show out in the middle of the Huntington Center in front of friends, family and hapless shoppers.

My mom signed me up after seeing an ad in the local paper. The classes taught standard charm-school fare; walking with a book on your head, sitting in a skirt, eating with a knife, using a feminine voice when speaking on the phone, sneezing in a tissue and accepting party invitations. The classes were taught by a tightly bunned taskmaster who was passionate about ironing clothes the right way, and if I remember correctly, never using the filler word of “um” or answering a question with “uh-huh.” Oh, yes, I recall she didn’t like that at all.

We had a book called “Crossroads to Charm.” It had a simple cover with the title across the top and then a small photo of a girl with a kind of Breck Girl whimsy approaching a crossroads, in her neatly ironed blue dress, with confidence. One chapter of the book was titled “The Fairest of Them All.”

Here’s an excerpt:

“Looking your very best at all times is not only something you want to do for yourself – it is something you do as a courtesy to others. Especially when you consider you look at yourself only two or three times a day – the rest of the world looks on you for hours on end!”

I remember that chapter placing an enormous amount of pressure on 10-year-old me. I have to look my very best? At all times? For the sake of all mankind, who has to look at me for hours on end. For goodness sake, young lady, do it for mankind, if not just for yourself!

Note to the young: This was before the advent of “selfies.” The idea today that a young girl would only look at herself once or twice a day is preposterous. Not only have Instagram, Vine and texting made that an obsolete idea, but I know I personally spent $25 on leopard print framed mirrors for my daughter’s locker.

I imagine the class now – if it were still being taught – would, I hope, discourage girls from making the dreaded “duck face” in every photo and teach them to always answer a long thoughtful text from their mom with more than a “k.” Heaven knows young girls need a lesson in how to sit in a skirt. Recently, I went around a fancy event telling girls in skirts to either cross their legs at their ankles or knees. That was clearly my Wendy Ward training jumping into action. I don’t know what came over me. I barely paid attention to the lessons in my classes.

I wasn’t enrolled in Wendy Ward Charm School for the “charm” of it, I was motivated purely by the end-of-class fashion show that followed the six-week course. This was long before the supermodel furor of the ’80s. My drive was purely the idea of having everyone looking at me ... on a hastily assembled stage ... in new clothes ... from Montgomery Ward. The very idea that I could be up on stage as unsuspecting shoppers came out of Miller’s Outpost or The Fly Trap was thrilling to me.

Once I completed the course it was time to prepare for the fashion show. They let the graduates run loose inside the store after closing hours. It was very literally, up to that age, the most thrilling experience of my life. I could choose ANYTHING from MONTGOMERY WARD to model in two different strolls down the runway. The class wandered the aisles of shoes and handbags looking through racks of clothes and running in and out of the dressing rooms trying to put together just the right outfit.

For reasons only known to 10-year-old me, I wore a nightgown in my first trip and then a bikini in my encore. This was the first of many (may I stress, many) poor wardrobe choices that I have made since then, including power bangs, acid wash jeans, anything with shoulder pads and overalls.

As I took to the runway, I remember people laughing because I waved and smiled as I made my way down and back, breaking the important runway rule of never interacting with the audience ... in the middle of a mall ... at a fashion show ... for Montgomery Ward. I believed people were actually there to see me and that this was just my first step into the world of modeling. It would have been rude not to acknowledge them.

A brief performance of the Hustle was also part of the fashion show. We all wore the same green and yellow jumper and danced to the song played from an eight-track player with a microphone propped up next to it. I’m pretty sure we nailed it. Everyone clapped. Even the people waiting in line for an Orange Julius.

I still remember much of what I learned in charm school. For instance, I know how to properly answer the telephone and how to iron a pleated skirt. Much of the class was old fashioned by today’s standards, and I’m equally horrified and perplexed by some of the attitudes about young girls that I learned all those years ago. The “Crossroads to Charm” book at times seems surprisingly timeless, with encouraging direction like this: “Being feminine, you first must be proud of being a girl and then proud of yourself,” but then sails off into reckless waters of feminine stereotypes by adding, “That is the thing that makes a boy notice you first.” Oh, so close!

Wendy Ward laid out specifically the three types of girls you could choose to be: Thoroughly Modern Millie, Elfish Pixie or a Romantic Princess. I clearly remember falling into the Thoroughly Modern Millie camp. We were the girls in the back of the class with calluses on our hands from the monkey bars talking about the latest “Mary Tyler Moore” episode.

I have to admit that my memories are fond ones of that time in my life: so innocent and sweet. Whatever messages I received as a little girl in the ’70s have made me the mom, friend, sister and professional I am today. So I’m thankful for it. Looking through my “Crossroads of Charm” book for this column, I found this line profound and full of lasting wisdom that Wendy Ward taught me:

“Being beautiful means many things. It’s not just something you do with your appearance, it’s the total you!”

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